4. So the Hebrews went on farther fifty furlongs, and pitched their camp
at the distance of ten furlongs from Jericho; but Joshua built an altar
of those stones which all the heads of the tribes, at the command of the
prophets, had taken out of the deep, to be afterwards a memorial of the
division of the stream of this river, and upon it offered sacrifice to
God; and in that place celebrated the passover, and had great plenty of
all the things which they wanted hitherto; for they reaped the corn of
the Canaanites, which was now ripe, and took other things as prey; for
then it was that their former food, which was manna, and of which they
had eaten forty years, failed them.
5. Now while the Israelites did this, and the Canaanites did not attack
them, but kept themselves quiet within their own walls, Joshua resolved
to besiege them; so on the first day of the feast [of the passover], the
priests carried the ark round about, with some part of the armed men to
be a guard to it. These priests went forward, blowing with their seven
trumpets; and exhorted the army to be of good courage, and went round
about the city, with the senate following them; and when the priests had
only blown with the trumpets, for they did nothing more at all, they
returned to the camp. And when they had done this for six days, on the
seventh Joshua gathered the armed men and all the people together, and
told them these good tidings, That the city should now be taken, since
God would on that day give it them, by the falling down of the walls,
and this of their own accord, and without their labor. However, he
charged them to kill every one they should take, and not to abstain from
the slaughter of their enemies, either for weariness or for pity, and
not to fall on the spoil, and be thereby diverted from pursuing their
enemies as they ran away; but to destroy all the animals, and to take
nothing for their own peculiar advantage. He commanded them also to
bring together all the silver and gold, that it might be set apart as
first-fruits unto God out of this glorious exploit, as having gotten
them from the city they first took; only that they should save Rahab and
her kindred alive, because of the oath which the spies had sworn to her.
6. When he had said this, and had set his army in order, he brought it
against the city: so they went round the city again, the ark going
before them, and the priests encouraging the people to be zealous in the
work; and when they had gone round it seven times, and had stood still a
little, the wall fell down, while no instruments of war, nor any other
force, was applied to it by the Hebrews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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